


if i drown tonight

by starfishing



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Not actually porn, exploiting ward's weaknesses, gratuitous earkissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfishing/pseuds/starfishing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it occurs to ward that he's not precisely maintaining control of this situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i drown tonight

**Author's Note:**

> just trying to get gratuitous earkissing kink out of my system.

Just a minute ago, there was a full arms' length between them. He'd swear by it.

A minute ago doesn't matter now, though. Now she's way inside his bubble, close enough for him to smell her shampoo, and that combat knife she was fumbling last week is smooth against his throat. Grant's back brushes the wall as they suspend themselves there: she's waiting for approval, for acknowledgement, and he's waiting for —

What is he waiting for? His eyes flicker down from Skye's expectant face to the cut of her tank top, the modest swell beneath it, her trim waist, all while her knife blurs into the foreground. Sloppy of him, but this is a training exercise. He's in no danger.

"Not bad," he says finally, and when his eyes light on her face again, her expression is changed. She's narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips in a parody of suspicion. It's all he can do not to look belligerent in response. He knows he's busted.

She confirms it for him. "Were you checking me out?"

His own lips purse in token disapproval while he schools the rest of his face into something mild and noncommittal. "No."

"Liar." Now she's grinning, all teeth and sunshine and no yield in her hand. He's impressed, but he's not about to encourage her by telling her he likes the way she's keeping him pinned down while she calls him out on being attracted to her. "You were totally checking me out. Didn't realize that was part of your programming."

His eyes roll all by themselves, extravagant derision, and in defiance of Skye's self-satisfaction, he leans his weight against the wall, giving his throat maybe an inch of clearance. She doesn't close the gap with her knife, but she rests her hand above his shoulder, and the blade still isn't far away. He thinks she's forgotten she's holding it now.

"I was checking your stance," he offers. It doesn't sound defensive enough. "Your footwork's lacking." 

The critique isn't enough to faze her. Her head cocks, part hip-hop sass and part cheeky animal. "Is that why you won't make a move? If my footwork gets better, will you give it up already?"

Grant actually scoffs. "'Give it up already?' Have you been making passes at me I didn't notice?" It's an unfortunate possibility, but he doesn't think so. Seems like the thought that he might be interested only just occurred to Skye.

"Trust me, you'd know if I was making passes at you." 

Assessing their current positions — Grant's shoulder blades against the wall, their hips the closest points between them with Skye's body angled in toward his, her knife hand braced near his head — he decides she's making passes at him now. He should stop her.

"You mean like you are now?" he asks, and takes the one escape route she hasn't blocked, sliding along the wall until he's free from the cage of her lean body. He circles around the other side of the punching bag to put something tangible between them.

She seems to consider the knife in her hand and ultimately decides to slide it into the back of her belt. Then she's circling the punching bag, too. "Nah. If I was gonna come onto you —" she pauses, like she's really strategizing. He thinks she probably is. "I'd wait 'til we were up close and personal, you know — training or something, and then I'd go for your ear."

"My _ear_?" He doesn't catch the upward pitch before it tumbles out of his mouth, or the image of Skye's lips at his ear before it suckerpunches him. "Why my ear?" he asks, as if he didn't just confirm her theoretical opening gambit was likely to be a winner.

Her grin is sharklike, but her eyes are too bright for malice. "C'mon, I know that's where they hid your secret switch."

He doesn't huff, but maybe the sound he does make could be misinterpreted as being huffy in nature. 

"I don't have a secret switch." He stops inscribing wary circles on the floor and waits for Skye to grab the punching bag and peer around it. She doesn't disappoint.

"So if I bit your ear right now, you wouldn't switch from Agent Superstar to Agent Pornstar?"

The words he'd need to convey his remarkable disapproval at the latter title — he doesn't mind the former, if he's being honest — don't come to him fast enough, but he's sure his expression does the job. 

"There is no Agent Pornstar mode." 

She slides around the punching bag, putting them within striking distance of each other. "Agent V-Card?"

"I'm not a virgin, either." _That_ wasn't a necessary clarification. It occurs to him that he's not precisely maintaining control of this situation. "Training," he says to her smirk. "Back on track."

She succumbs to his directive with suspicious ease. Grant's guard stays high while she works up a sweat against the punching bag. When she bypasses the bag to take a swing at him, he's ready for it. Skye can't keep her eyes from telling him where she's hitting next. Something to work on.

He catches a punch, ducks one, deflects another, and lets her drive him around the room in a wide circle. No way is he putting his back against a wall again. When she leaves him an opening, and it doesn't take long, he drops a fist into her gut, just hard enough to make her shy away. 

He's tracking her eyes; they telegraph her next move again and again. This time, they're telling him he should've cut training short.

She takes two high swings, one with each fist, and forces him to catch them so she can use his grip as a support. Her legs lock around his waist, their arms spread, and now she's way too close. He could put her on the floor. He doesn't.

In a second, her mouth is beside his ear. They don't touch, but Skye's breath is warm and ragged and it tears down his spine. He twists her hands in his. Maybe he meant to force her away, but she winds up closer, sweat-damp skin and fabric against his own. Her lips brush the shell of his ear. It's an accident, Grant thinks, but it's an accident that wraps around the back of his neck and drips hot into the pit of his stomach.

He's done for.

They don't say anything, not until her mouth turns deliberate, teeth on his earlobe, lips up under his jaw, and he finds the wall at his back again. Then she's panting against his skin and he's not holding her fists so much as her hips, and she has the nerve to sound nonchalant when she breathes, "So this is a thing that's happening."

"No it isn't," he grates, but there's no command to it. It's a thing that's happening. He's going hard under her, and that's a thing that's happening, too. They're in the training room. "This isn't happening."

Her hands wreck his hair in perfect unison with her mouth wrecking the rest of him. She's done this before: taken someone apart like this, unapologetic and reckless. Grant's done it, too. He's rarely been on this side of it. 

"Don't see you stopping me," she says into his ear. That's her mistake.

He turns them together, puts her against the wall and pins her there with an arm against her throat. It doesn't take long for her to surrender her legs around his hips, abandon his hair and grab hold of him at wrist and bicep. He eases up.

"It's not happening," he says again. 

She doesn't look frightened, but she does look put out. She waits until he backs away to reply. 

"It _was_ happening," she grouses, rubbing her throat. "You liked it."

He did. He did. He says, "Hit the showers," and manages to sound like he means it. 

She does, not without muttered complaint.

By all rights, that should be the end of it, but Skye doesn't seem to be satisfied with the outcome. For the next week, Grant is subjected to suggestive glances across rooms, expressions that involve too much of her jaw and mouth to be appropriate. She spends an entire meeting playing with her ear, teasing her fingers around the edge of it and never once looking his way. He almost jerks off in the shower that night before he decides he can't give her the satisfaction, even if she won't know she has it.

It's actually nine days before they cross paths one night, after the rest of the team has gone lights-out in their bunks. He's in the lounge, half-asleep on one of the couches. She wakes him up with a murmur at his ear.

"Past your bedtime?"

His head jerks aside, his eyes snapping wide open. In the seconds it takes for his heartrate to return to normal, he realizes with some dread that they're well and truly alone.

"Coulson doesn't give the rest of us a bedtime," he answers, sitting up. "Just you."

"I was always a curfew-breaker." Skye climbs onto the back of the sofa from behind it, arranging her feet between and beneath his knees as she perches there. "Since you're out of sleep mode, you wanna do some training?"

It's a trap. It's an obvious trap, and they haven't done any training since their near-miss last week, so it's a good trap. Grant makes a dismissive face, a shrug in the downturn of his mouth, and says, "No."

"Afraid I'll flip your secret switch again?" She nudges the back of his calf with her toes. 

Not afraid, just pretty damn sure. "No." He stretches the consonant out to make sure he's being clear. 

"Is no the only word you know?" she asks next, watching with an anticipatory glee.

" _No_." He delivers it deadpan because he knows she's waiting for it. She grins. "I'm going to bed."

She follows him, padding quietly with bare feet, until they're nearly to his bunk, below which Simmons is sleeping soundly. Grant stops there and turns to face her. 

"You're not coming to bed with me," he whispers as she draws perilously close. She stops only when they're a handful of inches apart. 

"Nope," she agrees, also hushed. "Just figured I'd say goodnight."

To his credit, he raises a hand between them, gets it on her shoulder to push her away before she can quite make her destination. Problem is, he doesn't follow through. When her breath grazes his ear, he's just resting a hand on her shoulder, not pushing her away.

It's deliberate right out of the gate this time, a kiss as soon as she's close enough, just open-mouthed enough to be pleasantly warm. Grant raises a shoulder in half-hearted defense, whispers something admonishing that he doesn't even remember a second later when the aftershock shuttles down his spine.

His biggest regret, he realizes as Skye curls her fingers in his t-shirt, is that he fooled himself into thinking he'd make it back to his bunk. Now they're here, a few feet from a sleeping Simmons, and he could let this happen if it weren't for that. 

"Stop," he murmurs. He has to say it twice, but Skye pulls away. Her hands stay where they are, one twisted in the hem of his shirt and the other halfway up his stomach beneath it. 

"Come on." She tenses the hand on his stomach, lets him feel the edges of her fingernails. His muscles jump. "I swear you'll like it."

He will. Exhaling slowly, he removes her hands from him and steps back. He opens his mouth to say 'go to bed,' but it comes out "Not here."

What he actually said seems to dawn on both of them at once: Skye grins and Grant closes his eyes. 

"Hey, wherever you want," she whispers. "Well, mostly wherever. Agent May has a policy about sex in the cockpit."

That's not a surprise, but it does beg the question — "How would you know?"

She shrugs impatiently, as if that can't possibly be an important inquiry. "Fitz told me."

"How would _Fitz_ know?" Hard enough to imagine how Skye came into that information, much less Fitz.

"She overheard Fitz suggesting she and Agent Coulson might have bumped something on the instrument panel one afternoon," a muffled voice from the lower bunk interjects. "Now if you don't mind, I'd really love to get back to sleep."

For a few moments, Skye and Grant are both still, neither of them looking toward the bunks. 

"Go on, then," Simmons sighs into her pillow. "She said 'wherever you want.'"

Skye fails to stifle a laugh as she grabs him by the arm. "Come _on_ ," she hisses. "We should've just stayed in the lounge."

"I should've left _you_ in the lounge," he mutters when they're out of earshot of the bunks. She pulls on his arm, pushes him ahead of her with her shoulder and a laugh.

"We _should've_ just done it in the training room."


End file.
